I have two missionary children.

They get to get out and go on walks. They do visit members outside. They still teach but mostly online meetings. They can meet people outside in public places.

Most of what they do is Facebook. Also, my kids are missioning in Spanish and are having much more success than their English coreligionists.

They do a lot of service. The soup kitchens and food pantries that will take them are getting many as volunteers.

Mostly they use Facebook to hunt for converts. They don't knock doors. They do street contacts when they go out for their regimented walks.

I'm not sure whether I would find this better or worse than the door-knocking days. Not that either situation is very appealing.

I think the service part would be way better than door-knocking. The time would go faster and you would feel you were really helping people. It could even hold you in good stead for the future on school or job applications, perhaps.

A big concern I would have, though, would be to make sure the sites for such activities are safe (re COVID) as well as any interactions with other people (other volunteers, staff if any, and recipients).

It still bugs me mightily to think of parents, like Elder Berry, forking out $$$ to the church for the 'privilege' of their children hanging about for two years at the church's beck and call. Especially now if the mishies are pretty much stagnating in place.

Good way to put it - stagnating.

But my kids are tech savvy and both are admins on very successful FB places. But it is Spanish so...it might not be them.

Maybe this is how we will finally get missionaries to do service.

Most of the missionaries that I knew in Argentina were faking it.
However it was a turbulent time there. Frondizi was president and skating on thin ice. Argentine not mission pres.
We knocked on doors when we could but the ominous presents of police where I was in Coronel Suarez was nerve wracking

thedesertrat1, you are 13 years older than me! I would have liked to have seen Argentina from that historical perspective. I was there from 1975-1977.

During our time in country, the "Dirty War" began, in which up to 30,000 people were disappeared. As missionaries then, we were so naive about the scope of the political unrest. I do remember when numerous cops and soldiers came into our pensión in Comodoro Rivadavia to ask who we were and why we were in Argentina. I had never received my official government-issued "documento." I only had a tiny receipt stating that I had applied for one. And our U.S. passports were retained in the mission home. WTH? Scary times!



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/06/2020 11:46PM by cuzx.

If you go to admin I give them the OK to give you my email.
Let's contact I am in Orem Utah

You're at least 13 years older than I am. How long was your mission? 2 ½ years? I had an older prof at the Y who told us that he studied Spanish on the ship that took him to Argentina between 1939-1940.

According to a Mormon church almanac, the Language Training Mission was established in the 1960s. By the time I attended in 1975, they were experimenting with widely different methodologies. Our district studied language primarily and only had to learn charla C (the restoration). Other districts had to memorize more discussions. The group behind us was using a TPR (total physical response) type method using different sized colored blocks.

Over the years, TPR developed into TPRS (teaching proficiency through reading and storytelling) built on Stephen Krashen's theories of language acquisition. I wonder what the current MTC methodology consists of.

My curiosity is piqued after studying Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese at the Y, Korean at the Defense Language Institute in the 80s, and three decades of teaching foreign language myself.

Missions seem like cake now compared to what they had to endure in the past.

What was the point of all that? no member asks themselves

Especially meeting with members and praying to have an investigator ready (forcing one of their neighbors or friends) to be baptized in a month? Or knocking on doors and getting bashed by any and everyone? Definitely some good questions people should be asking.

Now the Lord just wants missionaries to "Like" things they didn't create and become an online predator. Perhaps they have finally gotten back to their roots!

Hopefully not sexual predation.

Predation: pre (before) dating; pre-shun; predation.

Dating before sex (dating precedes sex) = sexual predation.

They're still doing that? Like polygamy?

Online = more walls to hide behind. More fake looks.

I don't know if the church still has missionaries actually tracting anymore, anywhere in the world. When I went on my mission to (of all places) Utah, in the early 1980s, tracting was forbidden. But we were told that this was experimental, and that eventually the church wanted to eliminate tracting altogether everywhere. I don't know how that experiment turned out or if the church decided to keep tracting or not in other areas.

In a Utah mission at least, the 'no tracting' rule made sense. A warm contact is always better than a cold contact and with a lot of church members having non-member friends and neighbors who they can introduce to the missionaries, it didn't make sense to spend time knocking on doors when you could be teaching instead. When things slowed down, we visited members and primed them to provide us with more people to teach. I am also guessing that with half of the community being mormon already, that tracting would be an odd experience even if someone were to do it. I heard of a few isolated cases where the missionaries in my mission broke the rules and tried tracting. Some members complained through church channels and then there were some non-members who thought that their neighbors sent the missionaries to them, which actually caused problems.

Does anyone here know if (up until before the pandemic started) the mormon missionaries anywhere in the world still did tracting?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/05/2020 07:54AM by azsteve.

I belong to several groups on Facebook for foreign language learners and have seen several posts from missionaries offering English lessons or looking to connect with people to engage in a language exchange. It makes me cringe and want to warn people of the missionaries’ ulterior motives.

Mormonenonpiu Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> (snip) It makes me cringe and want to warn
> people of the missionaries’ ulterior motives.

Yes, every greeting, helpful smile and offer of charity has an ulterior motive.

To teach the church and baptize people into LDS Corp. That's what the church trains and grooms their representatives to do.

You might want to message the mods for those groups and let them know.

Saw two out on bicycles this very afternoon about 2 hours ago. Southbound on 91st Avenue near Union Hills Drive, Peoria (NW Phoenix), Arizona. No further details available.
Coraggio.

They still go to appointments...outside.